SERMON 13 - SUNDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2012

SERMON 13 - St. Mary's Parish Church, West Dean - Sunday 23 September 2012

James 3:13-4:3; Luke 12:22-34

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

It doesn’t matter how many times I hear that reading from Luke, I love it!  For me, when things are getting tough and I really don’t know how I’ll get through the day, Jesus’ words to his disciples seem to sum up so well what Faith is all about.  That wonderful knowledge that God knows what we need, when we need it and that he will care for us.

The illustrations which Jesus uses in this passage are so wonderfully descriptive – the feeding of the ravens, the beauty of the lilies – images which we can still understand and see around us today.  Images which so much capture the futility of worry.

But as a human being I am a worrier.  I worry about the health and welfare of my family, I worry about whether I will catch that train on time; I worry about writing sermons, I worry about the state of our Church today  – in fact, I don’t think that I am unique;  if we are all honest with ourselves then we probably all worry about something or other at some time or other.  Some of us are just that bit better at hiding it!  My parents’ view was that if you didn’t worry then you were probably being irresponsible! 

So, such a wonderful passage - yet one so difficult, in reality, to follow.  As we celebrate harvest this year, we know that the farmers have been worried about the weather we have experienced which has led to poor crops.  In fact, it’s been a poor harvest all round.  You don’t need to be a farmer or a devotee of the Archers to know this – my own apple trees are testimony.  Hardly any fruit compared with last year.  Yet we shall survive and we should remember that all things have come from God and we should count our blessings for what we do have.

I could leave it there – but in reality, God does ask us to be prudent and use the gift of wisdom in the way we utilise the other gifts he has given to us. 

Luke’s gospel reading immediately follows the parable of the greedy rich man who decided to build bigger and better barns to store his bumper harvest .  (I believe for those of you here last week, Andrew used the analogy of bank accounts rather than barns as a farmer around here has indeed built himself a bigger barn!)  He does so, not out of  prudency, but out of a desire to spend the next few years living off the profits of that harvest so he can indulge himself in the pleasures of life and put his feet up.  God tells him, you will recall, how foolish he has been to think that way, that his life will be taken from him that night and he will never enjoy the fruits of his greed.  What use then, to him, will be his huge barns bursting with grain?

So is Jesus saying, don’t be prudent?  Is he saying, be fickle with your harvested goods?  This certainly doesn’t seem to make much sense when you recall the dream Joseph interpreted for Pharaoh back in Genesis 41 – the seven fat cows and the seven thin cows – and how Pharaoh was advised to store up the bumper harvests of the first seven years to see his nation through the famine of the latter seven years.  And we saw how that prudency led to Joseph’s re-unification with his family.  So God is not saying we shouldn’t be prudent, he is reminding us that in seeking to use his harvest we must do so in a responsible way and in a way which serves his purposes.

The apostle Paul reminds us that we are the hands and feet of God on Earth.  Through God’s Spirit we are here to serve him – to proclaim the gospel, the Good News, here on Earth, today.  God wants us to live very much in the present – not dwell in the past nor worry about the future – you cannot change the past (although you can learn from it) – and God will worry about the future for us.  However, to fulfil his mission here we need to gather the resources together to do this and to use those resources to the fullest.

At the moment, most of the churches within this Team are embarking upon a Stewardship Campaign. It is not simply a campaign about getting more money into the church, it is also being undertaken to gather together other resources too – skills and talents.  I, together with other preachers in the Team over the next few weeks, am talking about these campaigns – but we are doing so from the point of view of theological gifting not simply asking you to “up your subscription”.  In order for the church to undertake its ministry in all its various forms successfully, it needs to ensure that it has the resources to do so.  The church is no different from any other large organisation in that there are monetary costs attached to maintaining its ministry. You will all have had paperwork explaining this is detail. There are also human resourcing implications – in other words we need more people to give their time and skills to helping in the proclamation of the gospel.

In this Deanery, this Team has been very fortunate in being able to donate significant sums of money in the past for outside mission, in addition to maintaining a high level of ministry within the Clarendon area.  I recently had the enjoyable task of reviewing the mission we are undertaking here in our Deanery and I was delighted by what I discovered, but equally saddened by the reduction of the numbers of people being involved.  Jesus tells us, in his Great Commission to the Disciples, that they should go out and proclaim the gospel.  Most of us here are privileged in that we have heard the gospel and learned of God’s goodness and grace in our lives. Now we must do Christ’s bidding and tell others.  We are all being called to some form of ministry and we must ourselves be harvested.

The last three verses of the Luke reading implore us to  “Sell your possessions and give alms.  Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes and no moths can destroy”. Here Jesus is impressing upon us not to hoard our possessions but to use them for the good of the poor and needy.  He is not telling us to literally sell everything, our houses, cars, DVD players, iPhones etc. but he is telling us to keep only what is necessary and important in fulfilling our duty as disciples – his followers - towards the poor and needy – here also including those who have not yet heard or understood the gospel.

Luke is studded with similar parables and teachings – all of which are fundamental to our Christian Faith.  We all need to sit down, from time to time, and reflect on how we treat our possessions – do we treat them as idols in themselves?  Do we hoard possessions when we could use them or their proceeds for the greater good of God’s mission?  The Stewardship campaign is about sitting down and reflecting on these issues.  As Nils preached in Winterslow last week – the way we handle and treat our possessions and money is a good indicator of where we are in our own spirituality.  This was something which really struck me personally at the time and which I repeat now. I am still reflecting on those words.

The passage read to us from James is very strident – as is most of that Book!  I like James’s no nonsense approach to his ministry.  My wife tells me that I can be quite a “black and white” sort of guy – from her perspective anyway – and so James appeals to me.  He certainly doesn’t pull any punches.

The part I would just, briefly, like to comment on is Verse 13 where he talks about wisdom – “Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom...Wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits... without a trace of hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace”.

Wisdom comes from above; it differs from knowledge, in that it is a gift of the Holy Spirit and cannot be learned.

In the way we apply our resources, be they money, skills, or time, we must use wisdom.  We must ask for that holy wisdom through prayer. 

During this period of the stewardship campaign, and I suggest frequently afterwards, we should pray and reflect on how we are doing in the way we are applying our resources.  Are we, indeed, giving enough back to God or are we hoarding those resources for no other reason than our own self-satisfaction or self-glorification.

God does not want us to worry about ourselves but he does want us to worry, or more correctly, care about others.  He wants us to carry out his Great Commission.  Above all, he wants us to use the gifts he has bestowed upon us for his Glory and he will repay us more times than we can ever imagine with his love and care. 

In the words of the well known harvest hymn, “All good things around us are sent from Heaven Above, Now thank the Lord, O thank the Lord, for all his love”.  

Amen

SERMON 12 - SUNDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2012

SERMON 12 - St. Mary's Hall, Whaddon - Sunday 9 September 2012

Psalm 119:41-56; Exodus 14:5-31; Matthew 6:1-18

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to you oh Lord. Amen [Psalm 19:14]

As some of you may know, I have recently returned from a few days break in Poland – in Krakow to be precise - and during my stay I had the opportunity to visit the sites of some of the worst atrocities ever committed by Humankind against itself.  Whilst there I visited the former Jewish Ghetto and Gestapo Headquarters and cells in Krakow, the factory of Oskar Schindler and the nightmarish and desolate locations of Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camps.  As I reflected upon the massive human tragedy, standing by the remains of one of the crematoria at Birkenau, the words of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust came to me ... “God was never in this place, or if he was, he was certainly on holiday during 1939-1945 for he never heard any of our prayers”.

I have been struck and haunted by those words ever since I heard them.

Yet, as we heard in our Old Testament reading from Exodus, they are an echo of the thoughts of those earlier Jews who were led out of Egypt by Moses and Aaron when their cry then was “Did you lead us out to die in the wilderness because there were no graves in Egypt?”  It was a cry of despair and disbelief that anything good could arise from the apparent suffering which was all around them.  There are countless parallels between the suffering of the Israelites in the Old Testament and the suffering of the Jewish people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  As I looked around Birkenau, it did indeed seem incomprehensible that the omnipotent, omnipresent God could let such a thing happen; but I think that when we read the Old Testament again in the context of these more recent events, we can make some sense of it all.

It is interesting to reflect upon the passage in Exodus which tells us that God “will harden the heart of Pharaoh”. Having gone through much to persuade Pharaoh to let the Jewish people leave Egypt - ten awful plagues for a start – God now tells Moses that he will set Pharaoh against them, to follow them and to try and stop them.  But a greater demonstration of God’s power lies ahead – as we know, the parting of the Red Sea which is one of those illustrations of God’s power in the bible which is so well known by everyone – indeed, sitting next to a fellow football fan at St. Mary’s only last Sunday – he described an attack by Manchester United against Southampton’s defence as a “parting of the Red Sea”.  I promised him that I would use that in a sermon sometime!

God explains his reasoning – that by doing this, God can demonstrate his glory over Pharaoh and his army. The apparent pursuit will turn to tragedy for the Egyptian monarch and his army when Moses, once the Israelites have safely passed through the Red Sea, is instructed to stretch out his hand for the waters to return and destroy the pursuers.  The passage ends with the words “So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses”.

On my visit to Auschwitz I visited the cell of Saint Maximilian Kolbe whose feast day we recently celebrated on 14 August.  Inside the cell there is an everlasting candle flame which was lit by the late Pope John Paul II on a visit to the notorious Nazi camp on 7^th June 1979.  Maximilian Kolbe’s story is one which does indeed show that God’s presence existed in this part of Poland during the war years.

Father Kolbe was a Polish Franciscan friar who, like many other priests, was arrested and interned by the German occupying forces in February 1941. His crime was printing and publishing material which recorded the truth, as he saw it, of the effects of the German occupation upon the Polish population.  Priests came second, only to Jews, on Hitler’s hate list and one SS officer is recorded as having said – “if there are Jews in a transport then they cannot expect to live more than two weeks on their arrival here – if priests, maybe three weeks”. 

Maximilian arrived in Auschwitz in May 1941 and survived until 14^th August 1941. It is the manner of his last few days on earth and his death which show that his love of God and teachings of Jesus never left him. 

Whenever there was any escape attempt at the camp, ten prisoners from the same barracks would be selected to die for each escapee.  On the last day of July 1941 ten such prisoners were selected to be taken to the notorious Block 11 where they would be placed in solitary cells and starved to death.  One of those selected, a Polish Army prisoner of war, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was heard by Kolbe and others to cry out “My poor wife and children”. Kolbe stepped forward and in an act of unselfish love offered to take the man’s place.

Of the ten men who went into Block 11 that day, all but Kolbe died of starvation but during their time they were heard singing hymns and praying together albeit through the walls of their own individual cells. Kolbe, having survived all his colleagues, eventually was killed in his cell by lethal injection.  One writer has described this act as one “which brought new life by death and was not, what the Nazis had intended, death of “undesirables”, death to people who had ceased to be human beings. Their long period of suffering and resilience led to reverence and respect. The world of violence was lost by this one act”.   

As I stood gazing into Kolbe’s cell, I recalled this heroism, this monumental act of a simple kind loving priest and felt a warmth of hope and of God’s love in that awful place.

Psalm 119 talks about the need to trust in God’s word and commandments. Kolbe must have thought about some of those words during his time in solitude and suffering “Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, those who forsake your law. Your statutes have been my songs, I remember your name in the night O LORD”.  His prayers, his conversations with Christ, meant that he was never ever really alone.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus implores us to pray quietly and humbly.  After all, prayer is a conversation with God through Jesus.  Back in the first century, the giving of alms was a means of demonstrating righteousness in the eyes of God (“Those who perform deeds of charity and righteousness will have fullness of life – Tobit 12:9) Yet many saw it as a means of demonstrating their piety to others around them.  For this reason Jesus uses the giving of alms as his first example of humility in piety.

How good are you at prayer?  I often think that I am not very good at it.  How should we pray?  I am often left quite unmoved by some of the long winded prayers I hear in public worship – prayers which tend to end up as a personal shopping list by the intercessor or use words which are unfamiliar to us today.  Of course, there is no wrong or right way to pray.  Jesus already knows what is in our hearts he simply wants us to acknowledge his presence and talk to him as we would talk to a friend.

I am struck in this passage from Matthew by how simple and normal Jesus makes prayer seem. Though he yearns to hear us he knows what we need before we ask.  He appreciates, like any lover, our giving with no ulterior motive. However, bitterness will always poison a relationship.  We therefore need to find God’s grace to forgive before we can engage in any meaningful conversation with him.

Jesus has given us, in this passage, a basic pattern for prayer.  The Lord’s Prayer should be a template for all our intercessions and conversations with Him.  We need to keep asking for forgiveness for our sins and those of others and his help to overcome times of temptation, trouble and even, as Kolbe found, evil.    

I often hear that people give the excuse that in their busy life there is little time for prayer.  Let me let you into a secret, my best prayer time is when I am mowing the lawn!  I can have a conversation with God with the mower whirring away below me. All my thoughts, frustrations, dreams and confessions seem to bubble up and I can discuss them with Him. 

Answers to prayer may not always be those you are seeking.  God’s idea of time and place is often very different from our own.  You may not hear his word immediately, or even this side of the grave.  I am sure that Moses prayed many times to God to reach the Promised Land much earlier than his people eventually did; but God’s plan did come to fruition but on a different time scale.  You may pray for somebody yet never know when or how that prayer was answered.  Our Faith is based on believing the power of God through prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Maximilian Kolbe never knew the power which his sacrifice and prayers unleashed.  The Polish sergeant he saved lived to a ripe old age, although, ironically, he survived both his wife and children: the spirit and memory of Kolbe’s sacrifice shines as a beacon today amongst the dark satanic blocks of Auschwitz Main Camp and adds to the shame of his Nazi persecutors.   His one act of selfless sacrifice and suffering to save one man because of his belief in His Saviour, Jesus Christ, is an example to us all and a sign that God was not, nor ever is, absent or “on holiday”. 

Father, We ask that your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven”.

Amen

-------------------------------

Before we finally affirm our faith and say the Creed, I would like you to listen to about three minutes or so from the 2^nd movement of Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony – entitled the “The Symphony of Sorrows” which was the very first piece of music played at Auschwitz after it’s liberation – on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the liberation in 1995. The words sung are those written on the walls of a Gestapo cell in Zakopane in southern Poland by an eighteen year old girl imploring her mother not to despair over her incarceration and certain death:

No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Help me always.
Hail Mary.

 

Let us reflect and pray on the life and sacrifice of Maximilian Kolbe as we listen to these few notes:

 

SERMON 11 - SUNDAY 26 AUGUST 2012

SERMON 11 - Holy Trinity Church, East Grimstead - Sunday 26 August 2012

Ephesians 6:20-30

I was delighted when Nils asked me to address you this morning - especially as the New Testament reading we had, from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, is a reading which, I remember back in my school days, was frequently followed with the hymn – “When a knight won his spurs in the stories of old”.  Do you remember that hymn?  Can anyone sing the rest of the first verse?  “He was gentle and brave he was gallant and bold.  With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand, for God and for valour he rode through the land” 

This also brought back memories of dressing up as knights and going around trying to injure our fellow knights – always the bad black ones – in the playground. 

Well this idea of dressing up in armour got me thinking – when do we ever get a chance to do that now – unless we are going to a fancy dress party and, quite frankly, clunking my way to the bar for a gin and tonic in heavy plate metal doesn’t appeal to me at all.  So is Paul’s reading out of date?  Is his analogy one which we can relate to today?  And how does this fit in with God’s love for us and wanting to protect us?  Swords and helmets seem quite aggressive.

I was pondering this over a beer in the Hampshire County Cricket Club member’s bar last week when it suddenly struck me – cricketers are modern day knights aren’t they?  At least some of us cricketing fans think so.  

 My apologies in advance for those who don’t understand the game of cricket but it’s quite simple really – a quick lesson - the team that’s in is out and the team that’s out is in.  It’s basically a game of two men against eleven others who have short legs, square legs, are silly mid-on or mid-off, with a wicket running between two sets of wickets, and after five whole days of playing the game often ends with no result.  Being an English game, it relies upon very good weather which it often doesn’t have and a team often relies upon the worst batsmen to win the match for it.  More simply, the team that’s out tries to get the team that’s in, out by bowling a hard piece of cork at three pieces of wood behind a batsman who tries to hit the ball before the ball hits the three pieces of wood!

Now what does every batsman need when he goes out to face the likes of Dale Steyn? A helmet, chest guard, arm guard, thigh guard, pads, gloves, a box and finally a bat.  In fact, armour!

So let’s have a good look at what we actually have here: somebody ready to face the evil one – Dale Steyn in my analogy.  Somebody who is prepared.

If we read a modern interpretation of this bible passage, say from the Message or Good News we learn, in simple terms, that Paul is telling us that we can expect that the full force of Satan will be thrown at us frequently and we must work together as a team to stop him winning.  In the same way, in cricket, our batsman here has also to rely upon his team mates, especially the batsman who is in with him, to hold his ground and score runs and fend off the fast ball – the Yorker or the full toss, to keep the runs coming.

Likewise, God wants us to stand firm against all that is thrown against his team.  In this way he is giving us the armour (the protection) and the weapons (the bat) to do just that – not simply to do others down – not for us to score more runs than anyone else for simply our own sake, but to work together as a team to combat the forces of evil.

If you follow cricket you will know that often the weaker player will deliberately avoid scoring a run in order to keep his stronger team mate on strike for the next over – (that’s the next six balls) – fully knowing that his team mate is the better player.  Having put on our own armour, we must likewise use it to protect not just ourselves but others.

It’s not always that easy though.  However much we protect ourselves sometimes we fail, get hurt or dismissed and it doesn't quite work out as we thought.  You only needed to ask Kevin Pietersen this weekend what that feels like!  But being ready is always half the battle won.

“Be prepared” is the motto of the Scouting movement.  I think it should be adopted by the Church too!  That’s what Paul is telling us - Let’s go out as the scouts of Christ.  Let’s score those runs and dismiss Satan for a duck!  Preferably a golden one!

Amen

 

SERMON 10 - SUNDAY 1 JULY 2012

SERMON 10 - SUNDAY 1ST JULY 2012 - All Saints' Parish Church, Whiteparish

Jeremiah 11:1-14 & Romans 13:1-10

In just over five weeks’ time, my 15 year old son and I will be boarding an Easyjet airliner from Bristol International Airport – yes we would appreciate your prayers!  – for a destination in Poland – Krakow to be precise.  No, we didn’t get the dates of the Euro 2012 international football competition wrong nor are we going there to enjoy the gourmet delights of Polish cooking.  We are going to visit the historic sites of this Polish city – the cathedral with its trumpeter in the tower, the Cloth Hall, the wonderful market square, the beautiful  buildings and other wide squares and avenues – all of which have graced our TV screens recently – at least the TVs of those who follow football.  The city of Krakow has a deep and rich history - but it also has a very dark one too for, indeed, during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s, it was the capital of Hitler’s General Government of Poland under Hans Frank with its own large Jewish Ghetto.

About 30 miles west of Krakow, the rivers Vistula (which runs through Krakow) and the Sola meet in a town with exactly the same size of population as Salisbury – 48,000.  So like Salisbury it is a place where rivers meet; it also has a large church with a tallish spire.  There the resemblance stops – for this town has a large industrial zone on its outskirts. It also has something else! The town’s name is Oswiecim – better known in the west by its German name - Auschwitz  - and this is the principal reason for our trip.  My son has been doing some project work about the Holocaust and instead of going on an organised school trip, elected to go with me because I’ve been there before.  Let me tell you briefly about that previous visit. For three consecutive nights after that first visit, I had the most horrible nightmares as I saw myself in the queue for selection – death or life. An intense feeling of utter evil seemed to pervade the whole place.  The horror recorded in that monument to inhumanity is indescribable and shook my then quite weak faith.  How could a God allow such suffering?  What was the purpose of it all?  Could there really be a God?

 That first visit was in 1989 when I was much younger than I am now – although not as young as my son – and I was in my “wilderness years” as far as my faith was concerned.  It wasn’t the most important thing in my life and could easily get de-railed – fortunately it didn’t, but it did wobble from side to side.

I sat down to read tonight’s two readings a few weeks ago and have to confess that I struggled with them both.  I thought, “whatever can I say in this sermon as these readings are so difficult. In the extract we heard from Jeremiah, the prophet is telling his listeners that having broken the words of the covenant with Moses, by not obeying what they were told to, the Jewish Nation will have disaster brought upon it and any prayers offered up will not even be heard, let alone answered!  Pretty heavy stuff!  This appears, on the face of it to be God deliberately turning his back on his own chosen.  How does that relate to the God of love we encounter in the New Testament?  

The answer to that question is to be found in the question itself.  It needed a new covenant – or testament – to bring not only the Jewish people back on track but also provide salvation to the profane or Gentiles.

Turning back to Jeremiah for a moment, you see, the Jews firmly believed that the Babylonian captivity, the Exile, had been brought about by their disobedience of the commandments or the law of the Torah.  They thought that only a strict adherence to the law was the way to salvation as a nation as a whole.  When they understood that a Messiah was coming they assumed that he would establish a kingdom like that of David’s and Solomon’s not a Kingdom of Heaven based on Grace.  This is why Jesus became so frustrated with the Pharisees who believed in religiosity – strict adherence to or religiously following ritual and rubric – thinking that was all that was needed. Some of us today can fall into that trap too.  Where church attendance and styles of worship become the end rather than the means and we lose sight of the bounty of God’s love and grace through the way we live our lives and love and serve our neighbours. God needed to come down himself in the form of Man to put the record straight.

Let’s fast forward, whizzing through the Gospels and Acts until we get to this great piece of writing from Paul to the Church in Rome.  More than any other letter of Paul’s, Romans sets out the post Pentecostal theology as taught by him.

In the passage read tonight, (which incidentally we studied in our house group only this week, on Thursday), Paul is imploring his readers to subject themselves to governmental authorities (in this case the Roman Imperial Government – Emperor and Senate) for he says, quite categorically, all authority comes from God.  The theme is once more “obedience” with a belief that if you do good and act in accordance with the state’s laws, then the state cannot harm you.  These words are sometimes referred to as Paul’s “Theology of the State” and I think can be contradictory at times.  It is my belief, and that of some far more eminent theologians, that these words must be read specifically in the context of the time.  The Church in Rome was in a very vulnerable position – being located in the capital of a large and powerful pagan empire – and Paul was anxious to impress upon the church there that it should not act in a manner that might bring about its own destruction by disobedience.

Paul, and we Christians, can, however, take a direct lesson from Jesus’s own teachings. You will recall, in an attempt to trick him into displaying a treasonable attitude, he was asked by the elders in Matthew 22:17-21 whether taxes should be paid to Rome.  He answered by asking to see the coin used to make payment and whose head appeared on the coin – the Emperor Tiberius.

Does this mean that we must be obedient to all authority at all times?  Those who ran Auschwitz – the major players – at the Nuremberg trials often tried to hide their guilt behind the “mantra” – “I was only obeying orders”.  Does that exonerate them then?  Surely the authority to kill 1.1 million people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz wasn’t authority from God?

Back in 1989 I thought to myself, if I had been a guard in Auschwitz I would have refused to have obeyed orders or if I had been a potential victim I would have risen up with others against the guards.  But would I?  It’s a frightening thought that I am not sure I know the answer to that question.  What is Paul really saying to us today?

A clue might be revealed in the life story of a modern day living Christian.  A few weeks ago, a few of us from the Clarendon Team, including Jane and myself, were invited to Godolphin School to listen to a Chinese Christian by the name of Liu Zhenying (Liu Cheng-ying) better known as Brother Yun or “The Heavenly Man”.  His autobiography is contained in this book called “The Heavenly Man” which I subsequently bought from Amazon and have read from cover to cover in a couple of weeks.  It is quite an easy read and it contains some remarkable stories about his conversion to Christianity, his spiritual growth, persecution, torture and imprisonment and also some amazing miracles including his remarkable escape from Zhengzhou (Chengchow) Maximum Security Prison.  It is a great testimony to the remarkable power of God and the Holy Spirit.

However, this evening, I want to just read you one small passage towards the end of the book which I think shows a true Pauline attitude to faith from a situation in the 21^st Century.  Brother Yun writes as follows (pages 286 – 287):-

“Once I spoke in the West and a Christian told me, “I’ve been praying for years that the Communist government in China will collapse, so Christians can live in freedom”.  This is not what we pray!  We never pray against our government or call down curses on them.  Instead we have learned that God is in control of both our own lives and the government we live under.

God has used China’s government for his own purposes, moulding and shaping his children as he sees fit.  Instead of focusing our prayers against any political system, we pray that regardless of what happens to us, we will be pleasing to God”.  We shouldn’t pray for a lighter load to carry but a stronger back to endure.  Then the world will see that God is with us, empowering us to live in a way that reflects his love and power.  This is true freedom”.

Since 1989, I have moved out of the wilderness (although I do sometimes pop back for the odd fleeting visit) and I think I am a little further along my own spiritual road.  I have never experienced or witnessed anything like some of the scenes described in Yun’s book but like to think that my faith has been strengthened by some of the things which have happened to me over the intervening years.   I have certainly seen other’s faith strengthened by suffering.

I am encouraged by stories like Yun’s but wonder whether I will view things any differently, after 23 years, when I arrive in that small town in southern Poland in August.  The horror will be no less I am sure, but will I have a better understanding of God’s plan and the reason for the Holocaust. Will I understand Paul’s words any better?  Despite all the suffering and evil of that place, will I also find, in some small corner, God’s grace there too.  I dearly hope so.

I’ll tell you when I return.

Amen

SERMON 9 - SUNDAY 10 JUNE 2012

SERMON 9 - SUNDAY 10 JUNE 2012 - All Saints' Parish Church, Farley

Genesis 3:8-15 & Mark 3:20-35

Some time ago, I heard the story, whether it is true or not I can’t now remember, of a young vicar who, having arrived at his new parish, let’s call it Great Snoring-on-the-Hill; put a sign up outside his church which read “This church welcomes all sinners”.  Shortly after that, the churchwardens were instructed by the PCC to write to the bishop to have the new incumbent removed.  The reason, the letter explained, was that such a sign suggested that anyone going to that church was a sinner and that the good reputation of the regular churchgoers in that upstanding community of Great Snoring would thereby be compromised – besides which, the sign might attract real sinners, which was  certainly not something they would wish to see happen.

This story, be it true or not, got me thinking about how many people don’t come to church because they think it is only for holy people who do not sin and are always pure in body, mind and soul?  - I certainly used to - or if they were found sinning, would be labelled “hypocrites” or “un-Christian”. For many years, let’s call them my “wilderness years” I thought like that.  I turned my back, not on God - I’ve never done that - but on the institution we call church because I thought it was a place where only the holiest of believers went.  I felt that unless I was completely pure, I would be struck down by lightening or something if I ventured upon holy ground.  I preferred to pray and read my bible, whenever I got around to it that is, in the privacy of my home.

In our readings today, we first of all heard of that first temptation which led Adam astray, to eat of the forbidden fruit after having been told by God, that he was not to do so.  It’s also the first occasion that the poor woman gets blamed for the man’s actions – but I’ll not go further there – except that I’ve used the excuse myself before now – usually when we are late for an event. 

That event in the Garden of Eden, known as The Fall, was the first of many occasions when the God of the Jews was let down by his chosen people and we read throughout the Old Testament of how prophet after prophet predicted the fall and exile of the Jewish nation and also of the countless occasions when God forgave them, entered into fresh covenants, and gave them another chance. Even the great anointed king, David, who committed murder and adultery, was ultimately forgiven and blessed with his son, Solomon who became a great and wise ruler.  Our whole faith is based, therefore, on repentance and forgiveness culminating in that great sacrifice upon the Cross.

As Christians, the forgiveness of our sins through the Cross is at the heart of our faith.  So what is Jesus saying, then, in St. Mark’s Gospel when he says “but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin”?  Indeed, when in Matthew 18:21 Peter asks Jesus how many times should he forgive his brother, Jesus’s answer is “not seven times but seventy-seven times” meaning an infinite number.  Yet here in Mark (and this passage is parallelled in the other synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke) he is saying that there is an unforgivable sin which cannot be forgiven – something which seems to attack the very heart of our faith – a faith based on Jesus’s own life and teachings of repentance and forgiveness.  It must truly be something awful.

I am a sinner!  I’ll readily admit that.  I doubt there is a day that goes by in which I don’t do something, very often in thought, which God disapproves of.  Earlier in the service we confessed our sins and asked for forgiveness truly believing that if we are genuinely repentant those sins will be forgiven.  So what is an “eternal unforgivable sin” and are we in danger of committing it and thereby cutting ourselves off from God’s salvation.

I remember having a discussion with a couple of Christian friends in Liverpool over a rather good Indian meal and beer.  We wondered whether God had a ranking system for sins so that if we took a pen home from work and didn’t return it that ranked much lower than if we committed murder; and a single crime of passion murder ranked lower than genocide.  Then one member of our group offered the view that any sin against the Ten Commandments merited the same ranking irrespective of its severity.  That had me worried that all the pens I had ever “borrowed” from work ranked alongside the genocide of the Second World War!

Let’s look again at what Jesus says in this and the parallel passages of the other gospels.  Numerous scholars down the years have theorised and debated what the unforgivable sin is that Jesus talks about. Christianity magazine’s resident theologian, Greg Downes puts forward five suggestions (and I have some copies of his article which appeared in this April’s edition for you to take away after the service):

First of all – is it a very serious sin?  If that is the case, then, as we have just seen, why were such biblical characters as Moses, Joshua, King David, and Elijah forgiven and given such prominence?  Indeed, Moses and Elijah were with Jesus at the transfiguration. They all committed murder or genocide in their time

Secondly – was it declaring God incarnate to be the devil incarnate? - for we read that the scribes, the learned ones – suggested that only the devil incarnate could cast out demons.  But Jesus answers this by saying that this is illogical as if a kingdom is divided against itself it will fall. It makes no sense therefore, because if Satan rises up against himself he will destroy himself. In itself it’s a stupid comment and not worthy of further comment.

Thirdly – was it rejecting the gospel? – the good news of Jesus Christ? - in circumstances where the gospel has been clearly heard but then rejected. Well, it has to be more than that because Jesus talks about blaspheming which implies speaking against the Holy Spirit - not simply rejecting Him.  Blasphemy comes from two Greek word – blapto – “to injure” and pheme “to speak”.  So a modern day word might be “slander”.

Fourthly, is it “backsliding” – a defection or turning away from the Christian Faith to some other Faith or no Faith at all?  That seems to have no logic either, because everybody has a right of repentance and we ourselves, ask for forgiveness every week, and very often we ask to be forgiven for the same or similar sins we’ve committed. I know I do.  Surely a loving God would not close a door to somebody who wanted to turn back to the Christian Faith.

The fifth and final suggestion is that it is the wilful slandering and rejection of the ministry and work of the Holy Spirit as it bears witness to Christ.

To look closely at this we need to understand the context in which Jesus’s words were spoken in Mark’s gospel.  We are told in one of the parallel gospels that a man possessed of demons was brought before Jesus to be delivered and Jesus performed his usual healing ministry.  It was after seeing this display that the crowd asked – could this be the son of David? – in other word were they asking if Jesus was the long awaited Messiah?

The Pharisees would have wanted to discredit this idea immediately and therefore suggested that only somebody with the devil in him could do this – in other words if he did have supernatural powers they did not come from God because they didn’t want them to come from God through this man.  It is only after these clear unequivocal accusations from the Pharisees that Jesus uses the strong term that such words are blasphemies against the Holy Spirit and therefore an unforgivable sin.

So where does that leave us poor sinners.  Can we, as Christians commit the unforgivable sin? 

Well, if we accept the fifth suggestion then the answer should be no!  Phew!  Because blaspheming against the Holy Spirit requires a failure to recognise Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God who gave his life to forgive our sins.  We cannot commit that unforgivable sin because by definition, a true Christian has received and not rejected Christ.

You see, it was not the sin itself that couldn’t be redeemed by Christ’s own redemptive work but the Pharisees hardening of their position and their emphatic rejection of Jesus’s status and ministry.

So, miserable sinners that we all are, accordingly to the Book of Common Prayer, as true Christians we cannot commit the unforgivable sin unless we consciously, maliciously and wilfully reject and slander the evidence of Christ’s ministry and our own conviction of the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

That doesn’t mean that we can sin in other ways with impunity, we are still answerable to God, but it does mean that we maintain a belief and a passage to God’s redemptive spirit. 

We therefore should applaud what that young vicar did – the church is indeed here to welcome ordinary sinners through its doors so that they may hear of God’s love and forgiveness and never be in a position to commit that unforgivable sin.

Amen

SERMON 8 - SUNDAY 27 MAY 2012

SERMON 8 - SUNDAY 27 MAY 2012 - Whaddon Roman Catholic Chapel

Ezekiel 36:22-28 & John 20:19-23

My wife often describes me as an “anorak” – one of those strange people with, in her mind at least, strange hobbies and interests – Chinese history, steam locomotives, ocean liners, trams and trolleybuses, and reading old maps and star charts astronomical ones (not astrological) to name but a few. 

An enquiring mind - which always wants to know more and more about ever more obscure subjects.  Yes, I can name the presidents of the United States, more or less in order of dates and tell you who won the 1976 FA Cup but I couldn’t tell you who is the front-runner in the current Apprentice!  In most cases, Sara simply lets me get on with it, feigning interest occasionally – and never complaining when I bring home that monthly bottle of wine for being a member of the winning pub trivia quiz team;  but I think her main concern is that, perhaps, I live too much in the past – yearning for those good old days which, perhaps, weren’t all that good after all.  As a friend of mine put it, recently, “nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be”!  Besides we don’t seem to have diphtheria and scurvy anymore.

Earlier this week, my yearning for the good old days nearly got me into trouble.  I was lucky enough to spend Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at Champney’s Health Resort near Liphook – courtesy of a voucher given to me by my wife. 

Because of the glorious weather we’ve been having this week I decided to forsake the gym and sauna and go for a long walk in the woods.  I had brought with me an old Ordinance Survey map from the 1970s of the area.  Now I told you earlier that I have a passion for old steam railways and I knew that the film “The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery” had been filmed close by at the Longmoor Military Railway.  Seeing it marked on my map I strode off with my trekking poles and rucksack intent on finding the old railway and taking some photographs. 

After trudging some two to three miles through a heavily wooded and steep landscape, with my footsteps being accompanied by heavy machine gun and small arms fire, I eventually found myself, not by the railway line I had sought but by the busy A3 dual carriageway and close to a military firing range!  Had I been using a modern up-to-date OS map I probably wouldn’t have ventured off in that direction in the first place – although the views were magnificent and I didn’t step on any unexploded shells.

When I came to sit down and reflect upon today’s readings, the passage from Ezekiel reminded me of that aborted quest to find the long lost railway line.  A member of my House Group once said “I don’t do the Old Testament – I can’t accept a God who smites and seems to be grumpy all the time – I prefer the loving God of the New Testament – I can relate to Him”.  Her words came flooding back to me and I thought, perhaps there is something in that – like my old OS Map, perhaps, in looking for what there is for us today, we need to put aside and forget what went on before - that I shouldn’t ever preach on the Old Testament but concentrate on the Gospels and the writings of Paul and the Apostles.

 But, there again, when I looked at my old map, the contours, the physical geographical features are still there today – the rivers, the mountains and the basic infrastructures haven’t changed.  What has happened to the landscape is that some of the obsolete man made features have gone and new features have been written on the new map – new housing estates, new roads, a new Tesco’s supermarket – but the old is still recognisable – even the paths of “dismantled railways” are shown.   And when we read of the problems which faced the Jewish Nation in exile, then we can often draw many parallels with what we are facing in the world today.

Chapter 36 of Ezekiel, from which a short extract was read to us this evening, comes immediately before the famous story of Ezekiel being commanded by God to prophesy to the dry bones in the valley.  In a series of instructions, Ezekiel is being commanded by Yahweh, God, to prophesy to inanimate or dead objects which represent the state of the Jewish nation at this time – the time of the Exile.  Here, in our passage, Ezekiel is prophesying to the desolate mountains and land of Israel/Judah that God’s people are coming back after their period of exile in Babylon, that the land so barren and broken and corrupted will be renewed because the people will return, fully cleansed and full of the Holy Spirit so that they will obey the laws and do and act in ways which will glorify and please God.

You see, the Jewish people firmly believed that their state of exile and being cut off from their God was due to their disobedience of the law laid down by Moses in the Torah.  God was giving them another chance – just as we as parents have to forgive our children again and again - well at least I seem to have to with my teenage son – so God also forgives us again and again.

Let’s fast forward a moment to our second reading.  If we read John’s account of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples we can immediately see those parallels with Ezekiel’s prophesy.  Just as God promised the Jewish Nation through Ezekiel that he would breathe the Holy Spirit and forgive the Jewish nation by giving them another chance, so Jesus gives the Disciples the Holy Spirit to have God’s power to forgive others.

This was an incredibly powerful message to the disciples.  They would have been familiar with Old Testament law and prophesy – after all that was the only Scripture they had – the Old Testament.  They were writing the New Testament by being in it – being part of it!  Jesus repeatedly said “I have not come to break the law but to fulfil it!” Jesus must have spent an enormous amount of his early years reading and studying the Old Testament.  We know that he got lost in Jerusalem as a small boy because he wandered off to hear and read scripture in the Temple.

There was a craze at one time for WWJD wrist bands and pens – “WWJD” – “What would Jesus do”.  Many of those who wore those bands or used those pens often said things like “We need to get back to how the first Christians acted and worshipped”.  If we did so, we would find that much of the liturgy and structure of the church was based on the old Jewish rituals contained within the Old Testament because they were still worshipping the one and only true God, Yahweh.

I am afraid I cannot agree with my former House Group colleague.  We cannot chuck away the Old Testament just because we don’t like what happened or feel that it will confuse the modern day landscape and not fit in with what we feel is comfortable or familiar.

Neither, though, should we cling on to it and not embrace its meaning and foundation for us today. To understand Jesus’s ministry is to understand the prophesies and history contained in the Old Testament.  To understand the psyche of the Jewish people, and how Jesus’s ministry and teachings fit into the bigger picture. 

We are the fortunate ones – we have the new OS Map showing the new features – Christ’s ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, Pentecost and early church.  But to look at the new OS map alongside the old one is to see more clearly how the landscape has developed and why.  Not just accept what is there now but also help us to understand why and how it came into being.

I will keep my old map; but I will invest in a new one for when visit that area again.  Call me an anorak if you wish – I’ve been called worse in my time – but I invite you to delve into the Old Testament at frequent intervals and read the histories and prophesies – especially Isaiah, Ezekiel and Malachi.  They all have great stories to tell and they lead, from Creation through the doorway of the Cross towards the establishment of the Christian church and onwards to the New Creation.  They tell Jesus’s message in the context of the much bigger story.

Amen

SERMON 7 - SUNDAY 6 MAY 2012

SERMON 7 - SUNDAY 6 MAY 2012 - St. Mary's Parish Church, Alderbury

Part 1

Acts 8: 26-40

This for me is an absolutely astounding narrative leaving so many questions unanswered – a remarkable occurrence where Philip is told, divinely, to use a remote desert road to travel about 50 miles from Jerusalem, the capital of Judea to the coastal town of Gaza – now so much in the news.  We know from the TV footage that this area of the Middle East is rather un-hospitable today – how much more must it have been before the days of satellite navigation and mobile phones!  Philip doesn’t seem to question why he is to go there but it does indicate that the Good News of Christ’s life, crucifixion and resurrection had travelled well beyond Judea and Samaria to the coastal regions of Gaza , Caesarea and Azotus (Ashdod).

The story is presented to us as an extraordinary encounter on this remote, and presumably, dangerous road – an encounter in which God is the primary actor.  From the beginning to end of this whole narrative, Philip is prompted by divine impulse.  He moves at the behest of the angel of the Lord to make this journey, just in a similar manner to which Elijah and Ezekiel of the Old Testament had been instructed.

To set the story in its historical setting, the eunuch’s conversion illustrates the gospel’s power to reach even the remotest regions and include outsiders at that time.  Ethiopia’s remoteness and invincibility were legendary and if the term eunuch actually meant a male who had been physically castrated, then his status as an outsider is even more emphasised.  In all probability, it was more of a title indicating his position within the Queen’s household, (actually probably the Queen Mother)  but, nevertheless, his inclusion within the people of God  appears to fulfil the prophetic hope that foreigners and eunuch’s  would eventually participate fully in the worship of God.

Here, significantly we read that the eunuch, a foreigner, had previously been attracted to Israel and its temple as a place of worship and he is now attracted to its successor – “the good news of Jesus Christ”.  We are told that he is making his way home – back into Africa along this same road as Philip – after having been to the temple to worship Yahweh – the God of the Jewish people.  Whilst sitting in his carriage he is clearly struggling to understand the latest piece of scripture which he might have been directed to read or picked up whilst in Jerusalem.  I wonder, how many of us have empathy with that situation?  I know I do – every time we hold our weekly house group something new and fresh is revealed as well as discovering that pieces of scripture, so familiar, are upturned by a fresh interpretation!  Different commentaries and concordances sometimes only add to that confusion as we read more and more.

Our eunuch is reading Isaiah out aloud (a common practise in those days) – a piece which is quite familiar to us too.  What does it mean? He asks. Or more importantly, “Whom does it mean?” Before we even reach that point Philip, guided by the Holy Spirit asks the eunuch – “Do you understand what you are reading?”  What a great way to start up a conversation for bearing witness to the Good News.  Does that happen today?  Well yes it does.  Let me narrate a short story of my own –

A couple of years ago I was on my way to London by train for a business meeting.  I was reading a book by Steve Chalke called “Change Agents” – here it is, actually signed by the man himself at Spring Harvest -an excellent book and a quick and easy read explaining, as it does, some of the techniques that can be used within a Christian setting to help shape the world more in our Faith.  At Basingstoke a chap got onto the train and sat opposite me and started to read his own book.  Between Basingstoke and Woking we spoke hardly a word but he had obviously glimpsed mine for he suddenly asked me – “Do you know Steve Chalke then”?  I responded that I had met him a couple of times at Spring Harvest and had been doing some work for Stop the Traffik – one of Steve’s Oasis charities.  He then revealed that, ironically as it happens, that he was a Christian and had heard Steve speak and currently he was reading a commentary on Isaiah for his home group.  Needless to say we started chatting and in the end, as I finished my book by Clapham Junction, I lent it to him.  He subsequently sent it back to me with a lovely note saying how much he had been inspired by Steve’s book and would be putting much of what was written into practice – especially in his working life where he had been grappling with ethical problems which the book helped him to overcome.

Now I cannot say that I was guided by any clear divine impulse but this story does emphasise that we can best learn and understand scripture when we share our knowledge and proclaim the good news to others – and also when we are not afraid to admit, like the eunuch, that we don’t understand something and need it explaining more fully.

I often hear it said by people who know I am a Christian and a regular church-goer that they don’t understand why Christian’s have to go to church.  I even hear it said that “I am a good Christian but I never go to Church – I don’t need to”.  I would dare to say that such a statement is a contradiction.

Our eunuch clearly knew and appreciated the need to be a member of the church of Christ.  Having had the scripture explained to him by the apostle Philip, he is anxious to be baptised – to become a member of church.  His enthusiasm which he previously had for the God of the Jews has been extended to that for God’s Son and Holy Spirit.  A completeness of his faith;  a desire for membership and fellowship.  By membership and fellowship in a Christian community we can grow – and we grow by being able to ask those questions of life which bug us so much – which will test our faith, which stretch us. Being a Christian is not about being comfortable, boring and unquestioning.  The closer we are to God, the more we need the help and support of our fellow Christian journeyers.

This morning, I want to illustrate that need for sharing our faith and questioning our own knowledge of scripture by inviting you to think about a bible passage which might be quite well known to you but which you might not really have ever understood or have recently struggled with.  You should have received a piece of paper and a pen as you entered this morning and we’ll use those as an ancient form of texting!  Scribble down your question and then place it in this basket whilst Jenny plays us some reflective music for a few minutes.   If you can’t think of anything quickly now perhaps reflect upon it later at home and then email it to me or one of the clergy team for a response.  After the second reading and my short homily on it, we’ll then take a few of your contributions anonymously and Nils has offered to join in to see if we can give some answers.  Also, if any of you have any answer or thoughts you want to share please do not hesitate to contribute to the discussion.

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 Part 2

John 15:1-8

In the Old Testament, mention of the vine was often used as a symbol for Israel especially when trying to indicate a certain lacking of faithfulness.  Jesus’s reference to the true vine is appropriate therefore because he is telling his disciples that he is the very essence of that network which will uphold and sustain a faithfulness towards God.

Now I am no gardener, indeed having been brought up in towns and cities by the sea for most of my life, I really am not all that close to the earth at all – confining my gardening to mowing lawns and hacking back the jungle which frequently seems to appear in my back garden – but even I have noticed that when I cut back the grape vine which proliferates at the side of our house, it bears more grapes than when I leave it alone – and yes I have frequently left it alone.  My wife has said that someday we might find some lost civilisation in the undergrowth.  The disciples at the time of Jesus would therefore have understood this much better than I do as the need to produce grapes and figs in such arid conditions was indeed very important and poor viticulture could be disastrous.

So what exactly is Jesus saying?  Well, my understanding of this passage after reflection is that unless we remain solidly connected to the plant itself, Jesus in this case, and are nurtured by the Holy Spirit we will whither and die at Judgement because we are no longer able to bear fruit.  Jesus wants his disciples (us today) to blossom and bear fruit.  We can so easily stagnate in our faith because we do not allow ourselves to grow.  We hear the word but we do not listen; we hear the word but we do not try to understand; and sometimes, I’m afraid, we don’t even hear it at all because we are engaged in our own distractions.

We can’t go it alone either.  We must be connected to the vine – each of us by being so connected is connected to each other.  We receive our spiritual nourishment from the same source – an inexhaustible source for all - but to grow we must feed ourselves and each other through the Holy Spirit.

Now let’s have a look at some of the biblical questions which you have given me.